


On The Subject Of Gratefulness

by orphan_account



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viconia and Jaheira solve a mystery and exorcise a few ghosts. Set during Shadows of Amn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Subject Of Gratefulness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Princess Lauren](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Princess+Lauren).



> Written for Princess Lauren in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.

Dawn drizzled grey upon the village when they arrived, hurried through the night with the rainclouds. The druid had driven her as though she were some beast of burden: repugnant, to say the least, a _stomach-roiling approximation of dumb oxen whipped on by a shrewish, strident half-elf bitch_ as a more _detailed_ descriptor. Ceaseless walking, followed by more ceaseless walking, all in the name of supplies, stirring herself only to get away from the Bhaalspawn and her circus coterie of numbskulled companions. The night was chill and her thin cloak inadequate, drawn over her head and face, the light rain pattering down to bring out the nauseating aroma of wet lanolin and remnant dirt. Night after night of sleeping rough, of choking dust unsettled by Windshear's cloudbursts, of leaving only to spare her mace arm the effort of breaking in the Thayvian's empty skull with one satisfying crunch.

"Move it," said the blonde repressively, her tone clipped and impatient. The forests welcomed Jaheira with their wide, nauseating sylvan embrace, her pale hair studded with raindrops, the corded sinews of her shoulders unwearied by the hike. Peasant in her background, she thought vindictively, her _rivvil_ milkmaid tramp of a mother maybe tumbled by a surface-elf whose palms must have been downright sweat-soaked with desperation. Probably dropped out with the afterbirth in some field as her mother kept working, her laughable love affair with the earth starting from her first mouthful of muck at her human mother's dugs --

"I am not out here with you for my health, dark elf," said Jaheira.

"I would to Shar that you were, Harper, for I'd see you lose it sooner -- for God's sake, let me rest, not all of us possess your charming and resilient _constitution._ "

It was too easy to know the rhythm of the half-elf's mocking by now, the ring and call of her unlovely accent that she'd had to endure from Amn to Trademeet to the Dagger Hills: didn't have to look at the other woman's face as she extracted herself from the mud and the detritus of the forest floor, picking her way down the hill to the ugly little village on the horizon. "Ah, I see, _constitution_ ," said Jaheira. "Did you not get enough fresh air as a child -- no, of course you didn't, silly me, I had forgot."

"You're losing it, _abbil,_ " she said, "so many of your silly, silly words, and yet not one of them even about illithid piss."

"I did not want to comment," said Jaheira, "so early of a morning, on your mother's milk."

There was a pause as they both made it to the bottom of the outcrop; Viconia draped her cloak over her mouth, her own pretty mouth, her dusk-touched skin, all of her beauties that the villagers would stone her for possessing without a passing thought. It was never any different. "You win that round," she said.

A smile vaguely touched Jaheira's mouth, fleeting and grim, so swift it was little more than a grimace. "It is so rarely difficult, drow," she said, and she stalked off into the dawn with her mud-splattered druid's calves and her flyaway braids all so that they could buy -- what would inevitably be -- maggoty bread and mealy apples.

Viconia DeVir had lead a better life, once.

  


* * *

There was something unsettling about the dreary hamlet the moment they had entered it: she kept far back inside the hood of her cloak, fingertips inside her sleeves, as the red-faced farmers came out to do their work. They barely looked askance at a half-elf and her cloaked companion, which was odd to say the least; it was not so much a one-horse town, she remarked disdainfully to Jaheira, as half of a horse -- the unsavoury parts of the horse, hooves and tongue, a hotbed of ignorant peasants.

"You know to hold your tongue," said the druid. "Something is not in balance here."

"Is anything ever in balance enough for you, half-elf? Perhaps if every rock and stone were pulled down by bushes and all the humans devoured by marauding bears -- not that I'd raise my voice too loudly for that outcome. You see, _abbil?_ Every second I spend with you I fall more and more in line with nature's balance."

"Nature screams out at your presence," said Jaheira, "and so would I, only it would be so loud and so long I would pop a blood vessel. Why don't you carry on that love affair with your own voice with someone who might appreciate it?"

Her short laugh in response was throaty and humourless: answer enough in itself, interrupted further by another group of farmers with their hoes and sickles over their shoulder. Disquieting, even if they were only going to till the earth and scrape at their smut-covered wheat or however it was they eked out a living -- Viconia had faced down too many angry yeomen, too many humans all too eager to put her on a pole and burn her to nothing but Underdark ashes. She repressed a shudder and drew in more to Jaheira's wake -- trailed behind her as the druid knocked on farmhouse doors, asked with brisk and (uncharacteristic) politeness what she might buy, did not bother to bargain with her shaved-down copper coins.

The half-elf never haggled, not even when she was being ridiculously ripped off all due to the slant of her cheekbones and the points of her ears. It slid under her skin and stayed there, prickling, until she finally demanded in-between doughy farmers' wives and their distrustful dogs -- "Are you deliberately abasing yourself, or is there some _mystical_ reason for it?"

"Do you mean something by that, or are you just bloodying my eardrums again?"

Viconia shifted her hood again irritably, the thin morning sunlight turning into stronger stuff -- drying out her wet clothes uncomfortably, moist and itchy. "You let them treat you like shit beneath their heels. You're paying too much. Not _quite_ the action of a proud half-elf. More the action of a spineless, self-hating coward."

"Do you honestly care whether or not I spend three coins or five because of my heritage?" It was less acidic than the druid tended to be: just scornful. "You hate the surface elves and everything to do with them, and now you lecture me about how proudly I should behave?"

She let her voice drop a little. "I hate seeing a proud woman bend her head to these _rivvil_ , Jaheira."

"You'd have me crushed underfoot if you even began to think you could get away with it."

" _I'd_ say that sounds intriguing, but I know _you_ profess duller tastes."

The answering noise of disgust was caught up in distraction; a little way away from the last farmhouse, up the beaten earth that had some pretense of being the village's main road, there was a hut. It sat by itself within a copse of sad-looking trees, cobwebbed over with dry strands of ivy from bough to bough. Otherwise, apart from an overgrown garden, the little dwelling looked innocuous. In a low voice the druid next to her said -- "You see," and was interrupted with her own curt: "Tch. I know. I'm no fool."

Miasma hung over the place. For her own part Viconia could not care less. The Bhaalspawn and her wretched band of do-gooders seemed to have to stick their noses into every damned problem that plagued Amn and its surroundings: every crying child, every walking wounded, every disturbed grave. She had understood when it had been about the money. When it was patently not about the clinking of coin it seemed to be about their patronizing desire to right the world's wrongs one by one, which seemed -- for the child of the Lord of Murder -- disingenuous at best. She let Edwin Odesseiron complain for her (the man had to have _one_ thing he was best at) and suffered along in -- well -- she did it anyway, damn herself, she had to admit. She did it and nobody was ever grateful enough for how they all gave of themselves; and yet she was still crazy enough to have the stab of surprised irritation whenever anyone acted ungracious for favours they should have been on their knees for and licking the group's boots.

(There had been more genuflecting, once, in the wake of their violence. She missed Shar-Teel.)

And yet Jaheira was already striding towards the house with the sack of supplies over her shoulder, flicking her muddied blonde braids out of her face with her jaw set in determination. By now the drow knew enough to anticipate, admire and loathe that look: it meant she was about to be a stubborn, irritating, interfering Harper cow.

"You're an idiot," she said without rancor at the druid's retreating back, and as she grudgingly began to follow: "And I swear to Shar it must be _catching_."

"Add it to one of your many communicable diseases."

Fine fettle today, Viconia thought sourly. It was probably time to resume spitting in her stew.

  


* * *

The next time, she thought, she wouldn't buy a little plot of barren farmland in Beregost; she'd go and find some deserted island instead and dwell there happy in the knowledge that she would never again dog anyone's footsteps on the path of dreary righteousness.

The house belonged to a witch. She was a crabbed, hobbled old thing when she opened the door, and the hut reeked of piss and cats. The house was barren except for a bed and some cooking implements and an assortment of scratch-mouthed ghosts. Ghosts sat arrayed in blurred lines within the house, over chairs or bobbing near the bed, strangely still. Ghosts had always been more cagey in Viconia's sight, shunning the day and people unless they were desperate or malevolent. These shades were stuck in place, or at least still, filling the small house with an eerie snap of cold.

Every single one had also died violently: there was a little girl hovering close to the door with her intangible neck covered in bruises, her tiny throat pressed in with thumbmarks until the fragile bones had snapped. The cats walked through them, or slept and dribbled in corners,

Instead of reaching for the heavy oaken staff slung along her back and making some comment about nature's reclamation, Jaheira surprised her by simply saying: "There are mushrooms growing in the trees behind your house, grandmother. I would like to pay to gather them."

 _Still_ more coin for something that was growing wild and free for any fool to come and liberate it out of nature -- it looked like something the ridiculous d'Arnise child would suggest, maybe bartering to the wolves and contributing to the animal's forest economy for the privilege of taking away berries. The old hag held out her twisted claw of a hand for -- _eight copper_ , they had better be planning on killing her -- and the druid simply turned away to the garden, door slamming shut behind them with a rattle.

" _Mushrooms,_ " Viconia said.

In a low voice, Jaheira said: "She has done something to the bodies to make the ghosts remain there, like so -- they must still be buried in this place."

"I somehow doubt the old crone turfed up the sod herself," she remarked, "she could barely hobble to kill a cat with a spade, let alone dent the ground here with it. It's hard as rock."

"It might have been long ago. Some of the ghosts were old."

"And some of the ghosts were new; she's obviously been at it lately, _abbil_. The past year, by my reckoning."

They poked around the oppressive little garden, the weeds and the stunted grass in thick cover -- if there were any convenient burial mounds, they had long been grown over. No humps of earth, no suspicious open grave. Just Jaheira, braided head bent down as she took her knife and peeled lumps of orange fungi off a dead stump -- (" _Mushrooms,_ " she repeated in distaste) -- and the trees blocking out what thin daylight made it into that place. Viconia did not mind the dark or disrepair, but the hag's garden was simply depressing. A few of the cats wandered around and stared at both women in the way cats did, which was disinterested with a faint hint of malevolence.

There was a well at the bottom of the garden. There was always a well, or a pit, or a hole; annoyed with the unoriginality, annoyed with the whole day, Viconia drew her cloak around herself and made her way down to the cover. The hag was watching from a smeared window; she could feel her gaze. The rotting boards of the wooden platform squelched as she touched it with her boot and kicked the rock off the lid, and as she eased one of the boards away with her toe a truly vile stench came up. It was always the well.

"Jaheira," she called out, "I have a present for you."

The druid came over to investigate, hands full of orange, slanted features wrinkling a little at the heavy smell of putrefaction that rose up from the hole. The drop was long and there was no way to see either dried skeletons or decaying bodies that must have been down there, but Shar take the half-elf if she wanted them to go in to check. "Happy birthday, _tu'rilthiir_."

Close by, the door of the hut was hurled open. Neither woman bothered to look up. With a look of something near pity and much closer to disgust, the Harper was already laying down sack and supplies to raise her hands -- murmuring to Silvanus, the earth rumbling beneath Viconia's feet as she stepped away from the mass grave. The crone was limping out to stop them, her voice raised in a high keening wail of anger. She brought the old fool to a stop by unbuckling the mace at her belt, raising it in front of Jaheira in the universal symbol of _interfere and die_ : bitch didn't even seem taken aback by the chinks of night-dark skin revealed in-between her gloves and her shirtsleeves, just cried and cried.

"No!" she said in her thin, cracked warble. "You'll ruin it, you'll ruin everything. Whores! Slatterns! Tramps!"

"Clamp your mouth shut, or I'll clamp it for you," offered the drow.

"Hypocrites!" the witch shrieked. "What do you seek, destroying me this way?"

"You have befouled this place, old woman," said Jaheira. "The very trees and grass cry out against what you have done here. The forests loathe the remnants of unnatural death, and I will let them finish the work you've tried to stop."

"No! No! They're all I have!"

"If you're so eager to spend your time in the company of ghosts," Viconia said, "this can be arranged."

"No! _Stop!_ "

Viconia felt the pull of sylvan magic, the sudden scents of open earth mingling with the corpses as dirt and stones answered Jaheira's call. They ground down whatever was in the pit into pulverised fragments and left them utterly destroyed, neatly breaking the spell in consequence. The bones and flesh were rendered into harmless paste beyond the reach of any fetish dropped in with them, or any witch-bundles shoved into their ribs. She nearly expected the once-trapped ghosts in the house to peek out to see the spectacle; but there was just the bawling old woman whose annoying choked-up sobs were those of profound self-pity and hate.

"You killed them yourself," said the druid, turning around for the first time. "Save your tears."

The hag ignored this. "You interfering sluts," she said. "As though you don't -- as though you don't -- a dead man dogs your every footstep, you elf bitch, though you see him not! You!" The bony finger swung around, shaking, to the drow. "An infant mewls in your shadow! I hear it crying! Both! Both! Ghosts both! I'll make them feed off you -- I'll make them wring your necks -- I'll throttle you with your own dead -- "

The ghosts _were_ emerging from the house as the witch raged, drawn by some last sliver of her clutched hold upon them. She felt Jaheira tense in readiness flanking her, as the times had been few and far between when the half-elf tensed out of fear. Sick of the specters; sick of surfacers; sick of the mutterings of the splotch-faced hag as she raised her hands to curse them, the drow lifted her mace and took the convenient route of slamming it into the woman's skull.

It caved in like a blown egg. The hag dropped mid-sentence, dead before she could close her mouth over the vowel. The ghosts retreated. With an indelicate boot-kick to her side, Viconia rolled the old woman's corpse into the hole, and chose to ignore the heavy disapproval from the never-could-be-made-happy Harper by her side as the earth covered the last corpse over.

"She could have faced the justice of the villagers whose dead she took," said Jaheira.

"You _must_ be joking, _abbil,_ " she said. "The woman was probably their inbred grandmother-aunt matriarch. We'd have been run out of this pitiful burg with pitchforks and torches -- trust me on that."

"As much as I hate to trust you on anything at all -- "

The curse took. She dropped to her knees on the blood-speckled ground, dry-retching, a terrible chill taking hold of her. As the drow's sight blurred out, she could only vaguely appreciate Jaheira dropping to her haunches beside her, reeking of oak leaves and nature's call and self-satisfaction -- her ears deaf to _Viconia? Viconia, answer me!_ before everything went black.

  


* * *

She could have only been out for a handful of minutes, disgusted at her own blackout. When she came to, Viconia found herself propped up against a tree and away from the stink of the closed-up well -- head pounding, mouth dry, wrapped in her own cloak. Her limbs felt strangely heavy and did not answer her call. She was aware of Jaheira beside her, neatly wrapping the mushrooms in linen and sorting out the rest of their goods, not anywhere near the world's best or most kind-hearted nurse. Just like the druid, she thought bitterly, not kind enough to at least walk away and leave the drow to her own show of weakness. Surfacers, all of them wretches.

In an instant she was aware at something else inside her head: some presence, invasive, _h'arynoin_ , a whisper at the edge of her consciousness that was not her own. It was bizarrely familiar. It had the tinge of acquaintance, a long-forgotten memory of something she had packed away and disliked, but not far back enough to be an iron-hard wraith from Menzoberranzan and her past. It was --

Viconia choked, two spirits trying to breathe at the same time in one body, the ghost remembering and her lungs rebelling. Her entire being cried out in distaste at being ridden. _A dead man dogs your every footstep, you elf bitch, though you see him not!_

"Worm!" she shrieked, losing her temper completely. The druid dropped the mushrooms she'd been wrapping in surprise. "Cringing male worm! You -- you _dare_ enter _me_ this way?! You of all men show your sorry, wretched, _useless_ hide within _mine?_ "

She thrashed through her fog, clawing at her face until Jaheira was forced to pin her wrists down -- easily penned them in by Viconia's sides, more easily than she ever would have found it had the drow had her wits. She might have tried to rip the druid's eyes from her sockets for seeing that travesty visited upon her, then jammed them up Jaheira's nostrils for safekeeping. She struggled, but Jaheira said levelly: "Stop your bile-filled babbling or I'll send you back to sleep, dark elf."

Her mouth opened to cry, _Vi'thos! Shar claim you all!_ but it moved in the wrong direction. The light, awkward tenor coming out her mouth was nowhere near her own, alien and unwanted on her tongue, as it said: "J -- Jaheira?"

The druid looked at her. Without changing expression, grey-eyed and calm, she drew back her hand and slapped Viconia full through the face. It was no simple fly-swat, that blow, and her ears rang with it. The man's voice in her mouth was one foolish, tentative cringe: "I see you -- you still, you h-hit hard, darling."

She pulled back her hands though they had been thrust into a fire. Odd, too, to see the druid so completely undone. The carefully sculpted mask of Harper do-good solemnity had crumbled away, leaving only terror in its wake. When she spoke, it was a whisper: "Khalid?"

"Strike me again, half-elf," snarled Viconia, "and I'll bash my own brains out just to get away from this _utter absurdity_. Tell him to remove himself. Now."

"Still your scabrous, infected tongue, drow -- Khalid?"

"P-please accept my apologies for... infesting you this way," he said, her mouth more uncertain with him in it than she'd ever been since she was an infant. It was humiliating. "I was -- well, that old w-witch -- you can surely guess at what happened, can't you."

The druid was still staring, wild-eyed, offering none of her usual sage wisdom or patronizing advice. "How long must I be saddled with you, fool?" she snapped to herself.

Bizarre again to hear her voice modulate down: "I'm not... n-not quite sure; I would leave, I promise, but I seem to be, er -- stuck -- " (His words were choked by her own snarl.) "I'm not bound forever, I'm sure. I'm sorry. I really am sorry -- "

" _Stop apologising to the drow!_ "

" -- yes, dearest."

She was the site of Jaheira's shrewish domestic undead henpecking. Viconia wished for a swift death.

As though closing herself away, she watched the druid shade her face with her hands as she struggled to sit up -- felt the wittering male half-elf's apology inside her as both of them worked to grope up to a sitting position. It was slow going. When she spoke again, Jaheira sounded clipped and even, a little more like herself. "What I'm not understanding, my _dearest_ husband," she said, "is why your spirit lingers in _this_ place, of all places? You've never even been here. This is ridiculous. It must be some trick."

"Jaheira," he said inside her mouth, plaintive, quiet. Weakling. "I was always here if you were here. I would follow your steps until the end of time, if I had to, even -- even after -- death. I'd walk with you into Hell. I'd watch over you until, until I forgot what sight m-meant."

Were those _tears_ in her eyes? "You're a fool," she said.

"I know. I thought you'd be used to that b-by now."

"I still manage to find myself," the druid said acidly, " _remarkably_ surprised."

"I am sure this is an extremely romantic love story somewhere," Viconia managed, "perhaps in a home for the demented or the profoundly disturbed, but I would rather not be party to this _precious_ display of tenderness. It _is_ conjuring up a few feelings in my bosom, but none of them are of anything but hysterical laughter and, yes, a little bit of nausea -- give me back my body, fool! I wish to scrub myself clean of your taint!"

The woman in front of her seemed merely tired, drained, unable to draw upon her usual well of vitriol. "Quiet, Viconia," she said, "I beg of you, for once: quiet."

Before she could say another word -- her main thought was to invite more begging, as long as it was being offered -- the druid spoke again: "So what you are saying is," she said, "that instead of passing on to the Tree and joy and rest -- everything I was half-heartedly, bitterly consoled that you _had_ \-- you unnaturally haunt the dust at my feet, watching my every move as I journey on, denying the Mother her rights?"

"Er," said Khalid, "Yes."

"You idiot," said Jaheira, and she really was crying now.

"If you ask me, _tu'rilthiin_ ," said the drow presently, ("Nobody did," snapped Jaheira) "I'd say the heart of the matter is that, yet again, your spineless milquetoast coward of a male is too afraid to pass on to his just reward, and stays with you not out of any devotion but -- _mmmph._ " The _worm_ had the gall to clamp her mouth shut: rubbed salt in the wound with his mindless, fearful apologies inside her head, even as she struggled for control of her lips. The ghost of a smile came to Jaheira's.

"I never -- I never meant to cause you p-pain," stammered Khalid. "I watch you as uselessly as I used to stand by your side, I couldn't even... Even dying I w-wounded you, didn't I, Jaheira? It was strange -- I thought I'd be terrified. I was. But he opened me up over and over and all I could think was how scared I was for _you_ , with that madman Irenicus and his k-knife... I'm proud of you, love. I'm so proud."

"I have no heart without you," said the druid. "I have no grace."

Did all Harpers moon on this way? " _Spare_ me."

"So I release you from our wedding vows, ghost," said the woman in front of her, short and curt as she ever was, pale eyes fathomless and now surprisingly free from even the memory of tears. "You have no connection to me any more, as husband or comrade: begone, take your leave, goodbye."

" _Jaheira --_ "

The druid abruptly pushed herself up to stand, leaf mould falling in a light rain from her tunic. "I need to think for a while," she said distantly, and she walked away -- _walked away_. Leaving Viconia a possessed shell filled with the most obnoxious, snivelling male that was ever put breath into, to the point where she contemplated slamming her head over and over on the gnarled tree-roots until blessed silence came. She watched the golden-haired half-elf crunch off away into the garden, slipping in-between the trees until she was gone, abandoning the drow in the rotting glen where even the birds didn't sing.

It was quiet.

"I m-messed that one up, didn't I."

"Die slowly, agonizingly and painfully, male," said Viconia, "the first time was obviously lacking."

A few of the ghosts were emerging from the house now, cut off strangely from standing within the wall. She spat in their direction for the sin of watching, and they fled.

  


* * *

The morning lengthened into noon. One of the cats became interested in her -- half-paralysed from possession and wholly crippled by stupid -- by the trunk, a silver tabby who sat just out of reach and watched her. She spat at it too, so that it skirted away and fell asleep with a huff in a patch of sunlight. Khalid's disapproval within her sort of peeking around the edges, too afraid to bombard her so directly.

"You were nothing but a millstone around her neck, fool," she told him. "You were little more than a distraction. A buzzing insect. She's all the better without you; certainly _I_ don't miss your mewling, fearful bitching, and nobody else grieved too hard except for Jaheira's whining about it."

"I know," he said simply.

The silver tabby had curled itself up into a perfect circle, nose to the tip of its tail. There was little else to watch, so she watched it. "She blossoms without you."

"Of c-course."

"Tell me, were you a _terrible_ lover or an _awful_ lover? For interest's sake, male. I imagine a mix of both. You would have been made into a pain threshold experiment in the Underdark, your tongue cut out first so that nobody had to listen to your stuttering blather."

"You've b-been hurt before a lot in your, in your life, weren't you?" he said. "I think you always had bad luck... Jaheira once said, _I wonder what type of cruelty beget her?_ a-after we'd met you..."

"Neither of you have _any idea_ what cruelty is, surfacer."

"People get drawn to Jaheira," said the dead man, "even if they d-don't want to. Attracted. You admire her, don't you? She doesn't truly like you but... she f-fears you, and she pities you, and... she does trust you, you know... doesn't think you're all bad, d-deep down."

Temper flared in her. "Who _is_ this startled virgin you're describing? Jaheira knows I'd slit her throat given half the chance, dolt. She reminds me of it constantly! It's all I hear: my cruelty, my tendencies, my dark elf lies -- all true, and she lets me know every day. I've offered my alliances to her. She _stupidly_ turned me down, unable to look down past the prejudices of her homely half-elven nose."

"And you s-still keep asking, do you not? Over and over."

"I hate my own mouth for spouting out your pap, male."

Her hand was lifted by the unworthy puppetmaster within her, sleeve falling away from her arm. With any other man she might have thought he was admiring the smooth, dusky perfection of her skin, night-ash and lovely, the slim strength of her hands. But it was Khalid, who only flexed her fingers as though wanting to remember what it felt like before he laid it down to rest. Then he reached out and kindly petted the head of the sleeping cat, and she made a _tch!_ of disgust.

"What would you say to me," he said, "if I a-asked you to keep an eye on her?"

"I would tell you your idiocy is only outweighed by crushing ignorance of your own wife."

"That's good," said Khalid, _relieved,_ and once more scratched the silver tabby underneath its chin. It looked at her with what could only be smug, self-satisfied regard, and she hoped irrationally that without the hag it and all its brethren were forced to eat each other. "I'm g-glad."

It bothered her, how little she understood that.

  


* * *

Viconia found herself sleeping fitfully, waiting for Jaheira to come back -- was startled by that too: she rarely slept out in the open, where any danger might have come upon her and found the drow uselessly vulnerable. Somehow even sleeping she found no rest, and the noonday sun dappling the dreary trees overhead lengthened into the afternoon. She awoke tired and irritated and with a stinging headache lapping behind her eyes, as Jaheira came walking back through the trees to drop down by her side. It was not _her_ hand that reached up to take the druid's, and a queer look came over the half-elf's face as her fingers interlaced her own.

"Isn't this something," she said to the other woman caustically. "I swoon, _abbil_."

"The woman is dead, but her spell continues," said Jaheira, ignoring her companion -- mostly. "Why?"

"The geas she has over ghosts is gone, but the b-barring spell was -- is -- the sign of Velsharoon was here," Khalid managed, more than a little lamely. _Articulate_ was not something you could damn the half-elf with, even in what should have been clarifying undeath. "The spell wanes with daylight, now that she is d-dead. It will be gone ere sunset, love. I barely have a-any time left already."

"I see," said the druid, and Viconia was struck by how she held her hand -- as though it were a live bird that would be startled if she moved it too soon, her thumb brushing over the leather-sheathed knuckles of her gloves, an action so intimate and so absent that none of it was even remotely meant for her. Jaheira looked scuffed and worn. "You will take your leave, then."

"I love you," said Khalid, amidst her own grimaces. "I love you."

Just a whisper. "Please."

"I l-love you," he repeated, only a little unsteady. "You would have to -- sew up Viconia's mouth, to not hear me speak it. Of all the things I thought of saying to you, if I could say them, they were all u-useless, except -- I love you. The twenty years we had together were the only ones that ever m-meant anything. Be fruitful for me."

Those were big words coming from a man who had experienced around eight hours' unlife possessing another person, and could find nothing better to do than skritch a cat. If _she_ had been a few months' dead and riding someone, she would have worked out how to control them, take their limbs and gone on some kind of entertaining orgy. Death. Sex. Not moping underneath a tree as his bitchy wife communed depressively with nature. What kind of male _was_ he? Her sisters would have called him, _a crushed one_ , too broken to bother with any more.

"If you love me, then for Silvanus' sake, move on," said the half-elf. "If I know you continue on with me, looking over my shoulder ceaselessly, then I am dead as well."

"Jaheira -- "

"Do you hear me? _Go._ "

Fool. Except -- as though he had heard her mental jeering -- he lurched her body forward, shaken Jaheira's hand off her own. She found herself unable to even laugh as her fingers curled around the back of the druid's neck, Jaheira _helpless_ for the first and last time she had ever seen her, as Khalid took the unexpected plunge to kiss his wife for the last time. Just before their lips met, she heard the Harper say _oh dear God_ \-- and then they were kissing. It was a sensation not unakin to slowly watching a sword bear down on one, the stillness like the body was too afraid to not accept injury. She was _kissing_ Jaheira. She was kissing _Jaheira_. Or, at least, Khalid was kissing Jaheira, apparently much more palatable when he was forcefully shutting up, kissing her with a sweet edge of frantic desperation like he was flinging himself into a fire -- and then Jaheira was kissing _back_ , all claiming and vulnerable both, mouth oddly soft for a woman she was fairly sure could bite through iron. Oh, Shar.

\-- the Harper wasn't a terrible kisser; she'd had worse --

The drow broke away, coughing, hand clasped over her mouth. There was movement going on at the hut, and they turned their heads to watch: lighting up the dimming grove, the ghosts stuck inside the house had started their ascent out through the wobbling chimney -- faint, eerie blue lights, going up, up, up until they were out of sight. The hag certainly hadn't been idle. She counted a full dozen before she bored of it, ignoring the last few stragglers on their last journey to the afterlife.

She coughed again, head aching, and impatiently waved off a Jaheira who reached for her -- any more encouragement and she might have ended up bedded by her, she thought sourly, rolled by the bossy, rawboned half-elf like some blushing milkmaid. Which was probably how her husband had acted between the sheets. Her vision blurred as the spirit finally detached itself from her body: she hid her racking pants of exhaustion behind her hand as she staggered to her feet. What had stolen her body was nothing more than a faint blue outline, a strongly pulsing sphere of light where the heart had obviously been. She turned away to draw her hood back over her head even as Jaheira reached out to touch it.

"Go," said the druid roughly, and then as tender as she had been strident: "Go. I love you more than I will ever love anything on this earth."

Khalid bobbed, as indecisive in death still as he'd ever been in life. But then -- just as Viconia wondered whether or not an exorcism would be needed -- he broke away from his wife's touch, spiralling up to join the tardy train of spirits overhead. And then he was gone, forever. (Thank every unloving God, but none for Velsharoon.)

The supplies were gathered up in silence, shouldered by a silent and -- pensive? -- Jaheira. Twilight had fallen. She steadied herself against the tree to keep steady, and without waiting the other woman had already started off into the forest. They would skirt around the village, obviously, too sensible for otherwise. No backward gazes, no words --

"Well," said Viconia sardonically to thin air, "this won't be at _all_ awkward."

She traipsed backwards to the stinking hut and stole back the eight copper before she left. It didn't even feel vindicating.

  


* * *

Evening came. Rain fell. Jaheira drove her on through dripping tree cover as they picked through the forests, hurried through the night with the rainclouds, on their now-overdue trip back to the Bhaalspawn and her coterie. There was noisy, tactless silence between them, slithering uneasily on both their skins, and every so often Viconia made a point of spitting loudly.

Rain never fell gracelessly on the druid: just misted her over, bejewelled with dewdrops. When the drow slipped behind out of pure exhaustion she found the other woman waiting for her silently: silent and with intent, as when the dark elf stopped in front of her and wrung out her moonglow hair she said --

"You will never speak again of what happened today."

"What," she said, stung, "you mean, share gossip about how your _useless_ wraith of a husband watched us all undressing for the past few months -- "

For a moment she thought Jaheira would strike her again, and darkly remembered the earlier blow. Jaheira looked thin and mean and starved like a whipped dog, diminished somehow from the companion she had left camp with the night before. Lesser. All at once a terrible relief and a terrible misery had settled over the druid, sinking into her and drawing her up straight with it. "And you will never say his name again, you viper-tongued, hate-mongering cow. You will _never_ mention what passed between us. You will never even _breathe_ him. You will never -- you'll never -- you'll never even understand, so blaspheme elsewhere of him, you -- "

The dam within Viconia broke. She seized the half-elf's wrist before either knew that she had done it, leaning in close, her mouth twisted in a sneer and the rain coming down her forehead in thick rivulets. "Do you know what I could have done?" she spat. "Do you _realise?_ I could have rid myself of him at any time! I could have begged Shar to take his spirit down and place it in the most barren of underworlds, wandering crazed and trapped forever until the end of time! I could have destroyed his pitiful remnants until there was _nothing left!_ **I am a cleric!** Do you understand now?!"

Jaheira did not look afraid. She looked carved from rock, her breath warm on Viconia's chilled and wet cheeks, her own hair dampened into pale brunette tails that snaked down the length of her neck. Both women breathed harder, tight-strung, sharing an anger, sharing a hate -- "Why, then, Viconia?"

"Why?" The hate was suddenly gone, and she felt deflated. An empty bladder. She dropped the druid's wrist and pulled back at the sodden cloth of her hood over her head of wet hair, little protection from anything. "Why? I must be a sentimental, ridiculous fool, that's why." She went to turn away, but Jaheira's hand shot out to her shoulder. "What now? Will you kiss me again? I could teach you a few tricks, _abbil,_ if you'd let me -- "

"Thank you." It was quiet. Not even begrudging. Just -- it ran down her spine, _thank you,_ the first time that Jaheira had ever thanked her for anything -- saving her life, or passing her bread, or anything else that surfacers mindlessly thanked each other for. The day-to-day gratefulness of living. It was sweet as wine, and she felt like a fool for placing so much on two ridiculous words. "Thank you, then. I take my words back. I am in your debt."

The wisps of a smile visited the dark elf's face. She couldn't very well help _that_ , except to transform it into a smirk to hide it. "We could discuss the details of that, Harper."

"Or," said Jaheira, not entirely unkindly, re-shouldering her burden and turning away -- "or we could agree to be silent, woman, enjoy the moment, and return back to camp in peace. I am sick of these blasted towns and everything in them."

The rain came down. She no longer really minded it.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Relia, Katie and Angie for read-throughs and/or immoral support.


End file.
